High chairs have been used for many years to provide parents or child caregivers a means for seating a young child at table level to facilitate feeding of the child and to allow the child to share in meals along with others at the dinner table. These chairs are usually designed for children who are able to sit upright without assistance. There are many different designs for these high chairs and they may be formed from many different materials, such as wood, metal or plastic. In some designs a tray is provided with the high chair to provide a surface that the child can easily access. The chairs may be collapsible for storing or may have a non-collapsible fixed frame. Oftentimes straps, belts or other means are provided with the chair to secure the child in place.
One high chair design that is commonly found in many restaurants and public eating-places is that shown in FIG. 1. Although there may be slight variations to this design, they generally have a similar configuration. The chair 10 usually consists of a frame 12 for supporting an elevated seating surface 13. A seatback 14, arms 16 and front cross member 18 serve to hold the child in place upon the seat 13. Located near the base 20 of the frame 12 are front and rear cross members 22, 24, respectively. This design is particularly well suited for seating young children when the child is placed upon the seat 13 and secured in place in a normal fashion.
Unless specially designed high chairs are available, children that are too small to be seated in such high chairs are oftentimes kept in removable car seats or baby carriers that are brought to the dining table. In such cases, the baby carrier and child are usually placed on the surface of the dining table, or on the floor or on a seat surface adjacent to the dining table. Because baby carriers take up a relatively large amount of space and the amount of table surface may be limited, it is often undesirable to place the child and child carrier on the surface of the table. In the later two cases, the child is often out of view of those sitting around the table, making this method undesirable as well.
In order to overcome these disadvantages, the chair 10 is sometimes misused by some for supporting a baby carrier. This is usually accomplished by inverting the chair 10 so that top or upper portion of the chair 10 rests on the floor surface, as shown in FIG. 2. The baby carrier holding the child is then rested on the two cross members 22, 24 located at the base 20 of the chair. Although this may allow the baby and carrier to be positioned at an elevated level adjacent to the table, which may desirable, it can also endanger the child because the inverted chair may be unstable. The top of the chair is usually much smaller and has a smaller footprint than the base 20 so that the inverted chair is much more prone to tipping over. Further, as shown in FIG. 2, the chair back 14 extends above the arms 16 so that when the chair 10 is inverted, the chair 10 does not rest flush or level on the arms of the chair, but instead rests on the forward corners 26 of the arms and the edge of the seat back 14 so that it is sloped or tilted at an angle relative to the floor. This only adds to the instability of these chairs when misused in this way.
What is therefore needed is a high chair that can be easily adapted for use both for seating young children unassisted and for supporting a baby carrier at an elevated position and without endangering the child.